{"id":209453,"date":"2022-04-18T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=209453"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:05:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:05:40","slug":"elon-musk-twitters-largest-shareholder-we-cant-let-billionaires-control-major-communications-platforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/04\/elon-musk-twitters-largest-shareholder-we-cant-let-billionaires-control-major-communications-platforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk, Twitter\u2019s Largest Shareholder: We Can\u2019t Let Billionaires Control Major Communications Platforms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Elon Musk may not be sitting on Twitter\u2019s board, but he remains its largest shareholder\u2014and that\u2019s bad news.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The billionaire Elon Musk bought 9% of Twitter, an investment of USD 3 billion. (Rafael Henrique \/ Getty)<\/p><\/div>\n

14 Apr 2022 – <\/em>Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO notorious for posting asinine tweets to his 80 million\u2013plus Twitter followers, has purchased himself a position of power within the platform itself by becoming the company\u2019s largest shareholder.<\/p>\n

For a few tumultuous days, it seemed he\u2019d also become a vocal board member, promising to help implement \u201csignificant improvements.\u201d<\/a> That decision was reversed, but even without an explicit advisory role, Musk can still exert his agenda by shaping the discourse around Twitter\u2019s future. As if to underscore this point, Twitter\u2019s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, made clear<\/a> following Musk\u2019s sudden reversal that \u201cWe have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to predict what influence Musk could wield with his \u201cinput,\u201d especially since he\u2019s now no longer prevented<\/a> from purchasing more than 14.9 percent of Twitter\u2019s stock and could increase his holdings, even to the point of owning a controlling stake in the company. And at the very least, he will likely continue to use Twitter to attack his enemies and broadcast his views about the company.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Musk\u2019s tweets contain troubling clues about his hopes for Twitter. Beyond advocating for creating an edit button on individual posts<\/a> and other, more eccentric proposals, Musk has implied that Twitter should amend or abandon its content moderation policies and follow his preferred version of free speech, which should give us pause.<\/p>\n

While Musk has described himself as a \u201cfree speech absolutist,\u201d<\/a> it\u2019s clear that this commitment doesn\u2019t apply to those in his employ. Under Musk\u2019s rule, Tesla has worked to stifle dissent, including trying to silence a Black employee<\/a> for coming forward with allegations of racial discrimination and firing a female engineer<\/a> after she detailed a culture of \u201cpervasive harassment\u201d at the company. It appears that Musk\u2019s allegiance to free speech applies only to powerful people like himself, while those working under him are forced to settle for quiet obedience.<\/p>\n

Regardless of Musk\u2019s dubious principles, any move to relax content moderation standards warrants legitimate concern. For example, changing the policies by which Twitter restricts or suspends accounts that cause social harm could yield more harassment, hate speech, incitement to violence, and dangerous misinformation about voting and vaccines. Twitter\u2019s uneven adherence to its own rules has been rightly criticized, but having no rules would be a troll\u2019s paradise\u2014a Hobbesian hellscape of all against all, with the most vulnerable having the most to lose.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the policy changes that some anticipated would result from Musk\u2019s appointment elicited gleeful triumphalism within the conservative media sphere, especially regarding the prospects of reinstating Donald Trump\u2019s Twitter account. Representative Lauren Boebert tweeted<\/a>, \u201cNow that @ElonMusk is Twitter\u2019s largest shareholder, it\u2019s time to lift the political censorship. Oh\u2026 and BRING BACK TRUMP!\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite such alarming scenarios, too much focus on Musk\u2019s antics misses the bigger picture: Core communications systems like Twitter shouldn\u2019t be left to the whims of billionaires and profit-driven monopolies in the first place. Until we radically democratize such platforms and treat them as the essential public infrastructures they are\u2014shared resources that shouldn\u2019t be governed by market forces alone\u2014Musk, Trump, or some other petulant billionaire can come along and make them their playthings.<\/p>\n

What would such radically democratized platforms look like? Ideas for structural reform are flourishing, though you wouldn\u2019t know it from the narrowed parameters of mainstream policy debates. Some analysts and activists have argued for transitioning the platforms into public utilities<\/a>, or devolving their ownership and control to tech workers and users as cooperatives<\/a>, or breaking up<\/a> platform monopolies into smaller firms<\/a>. Others have suggested creating an entire public stack<\/a> in which each layer of our digital media\u2014from the platforms to the pipes that carry the Internet<\/a> into your home\u2014is democratized.<\/p>\n

Many variations of these proposals exist, but the key point here is to broaden our conversations about how platforms should be designed, financed, and governed. Given Twitter\u2019s outsize role in political discourse, more public scrutiny of its governance is necessary. And more radical reforms should be on the table.<\/p>\n

For too many liberals and conservatives alike, the horizons of our imagination about what\u2019s politically possible are dictated by market imperatives. But if we allow the marketplace of ideas to be conflated with the capitalist market, wealthy white men like Musk will continue to have much louder voices\u2014amplified by their tens of millions of Twitter followers, their obscene wealth, and their unquestioned fealty to market libertarianism.<\/p>\n

Another social media is possible, but we must fight to make it so. Just as, according to the bumper sticker adage, \u201cevery billionaire is a policy failure,\u201d so is every unregulated platform monopoly. We must reframe policy debates and radically democratize our media infrastructures to prevent their capture by billionaires. Otherwise we\u2019re reduced to hurling angry tweets at run-amok oligarchs.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Victor Pickard is a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication, where he codirects the Media, Inequality & Change Center.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – thenation.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 Apr 2022 – Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO notorious for posting asinine tweets to his 80 million\u2013plus Twitter followers, has purchased himself a position of power within the platform itself by becoming the company\u2019s largest shareholder–and that\u2019s bad news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":209455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2375,232,2305,1006,1008],"class_list":["post-209453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-alternative-media","tag-capitalism","tag-elon-musk","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284638,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209453\/revisions\/284638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}